世行首席经济学家的伪经济论

The story was one of the saddest I have read in ages. The World Bank’s chief economist ordered his staff to write more clearly, shut them up whenever they banged on interminably in presentations, and insisted all reports were short and lucid. Instead of being lauded for his bravery Paul Romer was punished like a heretic, and his management duties were taken from him. His story reads like a corporate take on the martyrdom of Joan of Arc.

这是我许久以来读过的最悲伤的故事了。世界银行(World Bank)首席经济学家保罗?罗默(Paul Romer)命令手下以后写报告要更加清楚明了，作报告时一旦开始啰嗦就立刻让他们闭嘴，还坚持所有报告都必须简明易懂。但罗默先生非但没有因为自己的勇敢赢得称赞，反而像异端分子一样受到了惩罚：被剥夺了管理职责。他的故事听起来简直就像公司版的“圣女贞德(Joan of Arc)的殉难”。

There is only one quarrel I have with Mr Romer. Among his edicts was to impose a quota on the word “and”, ruling that an official report should contain no more than 2.6 per cent of them. It is a bit odd to persecute the common conjunction, which has the advantages of being useful, clear and short, when there are all those words out there — leverage, deliver, journey, dialogue, platform, learnings or robust and a thousand others — that are none of these things.

我只在一个问题上不满罗默先生。他的那些命令中，有一条是对“and”这个单词的使用实行配额限制：官方报告里，“and”出现的次数不得超过总字数的2.6%。如此压迫一个常用连词，委实有些奇怪。“and”可是兼有“有用”、“明确”、“简短”这几项优势，况且还有无数个单词——leverage、deliver、journey、dialogue、platform、learnings、robust，等等等等——与这几项优势毫不沾边。

Yet when the Stanford Literary Lab published a paper in 2015 analysing World Bank reports, “and” came in for a hiding. The authors noted its use had almost doubled in the previous 70 years and mockingly quoted passages in which ugly, unrelated nouns were slung together with chains of conjunctions.

不过，斯坦福大学文学研究室(Stanford Literary Lab)在2015年发表的一篇论文对世界银行的报告进行了分析，发现“and”的确没起到好作用。作者们注意到，过去70年，“and”的使用几乎翻了一番。他们还嘲弄般地引用了一些段落，里面大量别扭、无关的名词用一串串的连词绑到了一起。

But is this little word really to blame? Over the past week I have immersed myself in assorted texts, starting with the work of Martin Wolf, who writes at least as clearly as any economist I have come across. Sure enough, in his last column my computer counted an admirably modest 2.5 per cent of ands. Next I studied a column by Janan Ganesh, a man whose prose is widely admired. He did even better, with only 2 per cent.

但真的是这个小小的单词的责任吗？过去一周，我埋头研究了形形色色的文本。首先从马丁?沃尔夫(Martin Wolf)的文章下手——其行文清楚程度不亚于我读过的任何一位经济学家。果然，据我的电脑统计，他的最新一篇专栏里，“and”的使用频率仅为2.5%，令人佩服。下一个，我研究了散文广受推崇的嘉南?加内什(Janan Ganesh)的一篇专栏。他的成绩比沃尔夫还要好，使用频率仅为2%。

After that, I widened my net and downloaded King Lear in its entirety, to find the Bard used a mere 19 ands per 1,000. When you consider most of these are stage directions — “Enter Kent and Gloucester” — the true score is lower still.

之后，我扩大了研究范围，下载了《李尔王》(King Lear)全集，结果发现莎士比亚每1000个单词里只用了19个“and”。考虑到其中大部分都是舞台指示，例如“肯特和葛罗斯特上(Enter Kent and Gloucester)”，实际使用次数要更少。

I was about to conclude that Mr Romer was on to something, but then turned to my own writing and found that in last week’s column I used a shaming 30 ands per 1,000 words. Mr Romer would have despaired.

我正准备得出罗默有一定道理的结论，但又数了数我自己的文章，发现我在上周的专栏里丢人地用了3%的“and”。罗默先生看了会感到绝望的。